Hiring Holds Steady at 86,000 Jobs, but Job-Changers Are the Ones Getting Paid
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Private employers added 86,000 jobs in October, and September was revised down from 90,000 to 86,000, so the last 2 months landed in the same place, according to ADP’s October National Employment Report. Hiring spread across company sizes. Mid-sized employers with 50 to 499 workers led with 33,000 new jobs, small businesses added 28,000, and companies with 500 or more workers added 24,000.
Trade, transportation, and utilities added the most jobs at 39,000. Education and health services added 28,000, leisure and hospitality added 19,000, financial activities added 15,000, and construction added 13,000. Professional and business services lost 27,000 jobs, and natural resources and mining lost 8,000. Information and manufacturing each slipped slightly, by 2,000 and 1,000.
The South did most of the hiring with 47,000 jobs, led by the West South Central states at 35,000. The South Atlantic region, which includes Florida, added 15,000. The West added 28,000, with 27,000 of them in the Pacific states.
Base pay rose 3.2% from a year ago. People who stayed in their jobs got 3.0%, and people who changed jobs got 4.8%. Gross pay counts bonuses and overtime, and the gap grows there: up 4.4% for stayers and 7.6% for job-changers. The report’s chief economist, Dr. Nela Richardson, says earnings growth for job-changers hit its fastest pace since March 2024, and she says a combination of bonuses, overtime, and more hours on top of higher base pay lured job-changers.
The number I’m watching is the 27,000 jobs lost in professional and business services. It is the third straight monthly decline in the category where staffing firms and consultants sit, which is the outside help companies bring in when they plan to grow. The September report I covered showed the category losing 11,000 jobs at the time. My read is that employers are filling the jobs they need today and holding off on the projects and expansion they would normally staff up for.
The pay data points the same way. A job-changer’s gross pay is up 3.2 points more than a stayer’s, and bonuses, overtime, and extra hours drove much of that gap. Companies are paying real money to land specific people while staying careful about adding headcount everywhere else.
If you’re hiring, base salary is only part of what a candidate weighs. Competing offers include sign-on bonuses and guaranteed hours, so price the whole package, and talk to us about hiring if you want help building offers that compete. If you’re thinking about a move, switching jobs is worth more than 3 points of total pay right now, so know your number before you have a raise conversation with your current boss.
The next report comes out December 2.
A Fake Job Interview Cost Binance $6.3 Billion, and Your Employees Are Being Recruited Too
Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange, says a fake job interview helped attackers steal about $6.3 billion on October 29. According to The Washington Post, a Binance software engineer was approached in September about a new opportunity. His first interview was a live video call, and his second took place on a popular chat app with someone posing as the prospective employer’s CEO. Then came a technical test, a standard piece of engineering interviews, and he was asked to download code onto his work computer.
The code contained malware that used obfuscation and evasion techniques to get past Binance’s security tools, according to Binance’s incident report as covered by Engadget. The attack had started earlier. In June, a Binance Wallet DevOps engineer downloaded a tampered installer of a common software tool while setting up an AI coding tool. Binance caught it, replaced the device, and rotated credentials, The Block reports.
On October 20, the attackers used the compromised work computer and an internal Binance AI tool to take control of 2 more engineers’ devices, where they found permission to deploy containers. Nine days later, The Block reports, they used it to launch the wallet attack. Co-CEO Richard Teng called it a months-long campaign. Binance says it has replenished 98% of the affected token assets and that about $2.85 billion was frozen or intercepted as of its November 3 update.
The FBI attributes the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korea-linked group also tracked as Lazarus Group, according to Security Affairs. North Korea denies it, and Kim Jong-un’s sister called the FBI’s claims a “grave political provocation,” The Block reports. Fake job interviews are a known tactic. A joint advisory on the “Contagious Interview” campaign reports at least 30,000 infected devices in more than 100 countries, and Binance says it stopped 57 other suspected North Korea-linked attacks this year.
The engineer who got hit was doing something ordinary. Employed people take recruiter calls all the time, and technical tests are a standard step for engineering jobs. My read is that the key decision was running the test on a work laptop, because that gave the attackers a path into his employer’s systems.
There are lessons on both sides of the hiring table. If you’re a candidate, never install anything from a prospective employer on a work device, and verify who you are talking to through the company’s own website or a known contact before you go further. If you’re an employer, put it in writing that work machines are off limits for outside interview tasks, because your people are being recruited whether you like it or not.
Legitimate recruiters feel this too. Every fake recruiter story teaches good candidates to be more suspicious, so expect more people to ask you to prove who you are, and make it easy for them.
Staffing your team doesn’t have to be hard.
Reach out and see how we can help.
Disney’s Layoffs Are Coming in Waves, and a 20% Cost Target Shows How Deep the Next One Could Go
Disney is preparing another round of layoffs that sources tell Deadline will affect thousands of employees. The cuts will reach multiple divisions, including the TV networks and the movie studio, in varying amounts. Managers of the affected teams have been given targets, and some were asked to achieve as much as 20% in annual cost savings. Bloomberg reported the cuts first; Disney declined to comment, and Deadline says the timing is unclear. The size and the 20% target both come from unnamed sources.
Layoffs have continued throughout the year since Josh D’Amaro replaced Bob Iger as CEO on March 18. Disney eliminated 1,000 roles in April and several hundred more in July, with Pixar and National Geographic among the most affected divisions. In August, it offered a voluntary early retirement program to longtime executives. Deadline reports that the process is complete, and some sources say more eligible managers took the package than Disney expected. The offer was always considered a precursor to layoffs.
The cuts keep coming. A couple hundred employees, largely in tech and HR, were laid off in late September. Last week, another 100 to 200 people in the Experiences division lost their jobs, most of them at the Imagineering campus in Glendale, California. Disney’s global headcount was just north of 230,000 at the end of its most recent fiscal year.
Chief People Officer Sonia Coleman wrote in an August memo that involuntary reductions would “continue into next year.” Dana Walden, the company’s president and chief creative officer, said at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference that there is a need to “constantly evaluate how you’re structured.” D’Amaro has said part of the savings will go back into growth areas.
Disney is doing this in waves, and I’ve seen other large employers follow the same pattern. A voluntary early retirement offer comes first, then a series of smaller cuts spread across the calendar, then the big round. Each step looks manageable on its own, and the total for the year ends up much larger than any single headline.
The 20% figure shows how deep this round could go. A manager asked to cut a fifth of annual costs has a few options, and payroll is almost always the biggest line in the budget. I covered the same early-warning logic in Microsoft’s voluntary buyouts, where the people most likely to take an offer are the ones who already have somewhere else to go.
If you work at a big company and your employer offers a voluntary package to one group, read it as a signal for the whole organization. Update your resume, reconnect with your network, and have a plan ready before the next memo goes out. Deadline names Glendale and no Florida locations in the cuts so far, but a company of Disney’s size makes decisions across every location, so Central Florida readers should watch where the next round lands.
Canva Wants Fewer Specialists and More Owners, and Its Exit Package Sets a High Bar
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins told employees on November 3 that the company is reorganizing in a way that affects 1,271 people, or 22% of Canva. For some, that means a changed role or a request to relocate to a centralized hub. For others, it means leaving the company. Canva does not say how many of the 1,271 are leaving, so the number covers all three groups. Perkins called it the hardest moment in Canva’s 13-year history.
Her explanation is that growth slowed this year for the first time in a decade and that “small changes won’t be enough.” She writes that new technology is changing what people create and what they expect from products, and she does not name AI.
Canva is making 3 changes. It is combining its Product, Growth, and Platform groups into one Product organization to cut handoffs. It is folding narrow subspecialties into broader roles and removing management layers so teams own goals from start to finish. And Sydney becomes the primary home for more product teams, with most hybrid employees expected in the office around 2 to 3 days a week from January.
People who are leaving get at least 6 months of salary regardless of location, inclusive of statutory entitlements. Employees who joined in the past year have the 1-year vesting cliff removed. Canva also provides 12 months of continued healthcare where it already offers coverage, 12 months of its employee assistance program for the employee and family members, career coaching, interview preparation, and a year of LinkedIn Premium. It is building an opt-in alumni talent directory that it will share with its investors, partners, and wider industry network, and departing employees can keep their company MacBooks. Canva is also offering $10,000 grants to departing employees who want to start a business or community project, with no equity taken, and they have until December 14 to register interest. A company-wide all-hands is set for November 10, and timing will vary across the 37 countries where Canva has teams.
The part I’d pay the most attention to is the second change. Canva wants fewer people who own one slice of the work and more people who can take a project from start to finish. I’m seeing more companies write job descriptions this way, and candidates who can show they’ve owned a whole outcome have the edge.
The relocation request deserves a close look too. When a company asks people to move to another country to keep their job, a share of them will say no, and my read is that Canva expects some of that. I covered the same dynamic in Uber’s relocation requirement, where the move works as a layoff for the people who cannot or will not go.
If you’re an employer, the package is worth bookmarking. Six months of pay everywhere, healthcare continuation, and an alumni directory shared with investors and partners set a high bar for how to let people go. If you hire experienced tech talent, expect people from Canva to start showing up in the market over the coming weeks, and explore our staffing services if you want help reaching them.
